


Gone to War

by Anonymississippi



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Soldier AU that wouldn't leave me be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-15
Updated: 2015-05-03
Packaged: 2018-03-23 04:16:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3754171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anonymississippi/pseuds/Anonymississippi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Danny's a soldier. Carmilla wants forever. And the world is never fair.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fight for Me

Showing up at the lesbian bar on seventh hadn’t been the best idea.

Then again, Carmilla was not one to overanalyze the consequences of her decisions. It was only until she was waist dip in a massive pool of proverbial mire shit that she began second-guessing her choices. But even sunk waist deep, sinking further, slipping beneath a suctioning pool of lecherous propositions and bedroom eyes and gone-before-sunrise-girls, she couldn’t shake the swirling malaise and dissatisfaction the establishment provided: so many women, but not the right one.

A premonition of some unarticulated doom stirred her senses to haziness like a spoon stirs dissolvable tablets, so much so that the components disintegrated to the elemental level: Carmilla could not distinguish where her conscious mind ended and where the unspeakable ruin began.

The club was too loud and the girls too young. She’d been perched at the bar for about fifteen minutes, sipping on a saccharine-sweet cocktail. Prior to the sitting stint, she’d let the debauched mass on the club floor press and grind against her, in hopes of dispelling that unsettling feeling curdling her mind to goopy bits of anxiety. Perhaps it was the drugs she’d taken prior to arrival. Maybe it was the crappy lighting. Or the unnecessarily loud music.

Not to mention, the drinks were shit, too.

“Hi.”

Number three of the night.

She was of average womanly build, a curving hourglass of delight, much too pretty and natural (her face was bare of lipstick and warpaint, no clumps of maroon at the eye corners from a wayward mascara wand), considering the standard fare that traipsed through the underworld that constituted a club like the Styrian Siren on a Friday evening. Her hair bounced in a freefall of shiny mahogany ponytail, an indicator of youth: fresh viridian eyes; choppy bangs that fluffed about her forehead; an emerald halter top with bare shoulders, tanned to a copperish softness. Her smile was wide and trusting, sincere even, an indicator of wholeness.

The girl had yet to be broken.

Carmilla would let someone else live with that burden.

“So…” the girl said, fidgeting her fingers into a knot of worry. “Do you come here often—oh, God, I didn’t mean to say—no, uhm… I haven’t seen you around before,” the girl corrected, sliding almost clumsily against the bar. If Carmilla hadn’t been half-stoned, she might have found it adorable.

Carmilla watched her attempt to get a handle on her nerves (these humans, so _childish_ ): the girl fisted her hands at her sides, straightened impressive shoulders, tilted her chin heavenwards with an air of decisive resolve. She even motioned for the bartender, and pointed at Carmilla’s drink. She faced Carmilla with that chin again, downturned but steadfast, an admirable tenacity for one so obviously naïve.

Carmilla recalled an impressive chin, lifted in defiance, in anger, in boastful righteousness. She’d seen it earlier in the evening, cutting through the filmy sheen of the picture paper stuck to the front of the stainless steel refrigerator with some dopey bow-and-arrow magnet she’d brought home from one of the alumnae conventions (“Once a sister, always a sister, Nightwalker.”).

When they’d moved into the apartment, she’d insisted they spring for the double-door fridge. Type O, B negative, bags and jugs of viscous, syrupy-slick crimson, relegated to the fancy shelves on the doors of the fridge. The fresh vegetables and fruits, the meats and cheeses, the eggs (“Why the hell do you need that much protein, Gingersnap?”) overran the refrigerator for weeks, then months, and finally a year or two. There were spurts of barrenness for the cabinets and fridge, during the training, the first tour, but never for this long.

There was a single rotting celery stick and a bowl of chicken noodle soup with saran wrap on top of it that hadn’t been touched since last August.

The rest of the kitchen was blood.

“I’m Darren,” the girl broke through Carmilla’s domestic reverie, forced her back to the harsh atmosphere of the _now_. Not that memory was necessarily pleasant; the _now_ just seemed far more hopeless. “Do you go to Silas?”

“Once upon a time,” Carmilla said, staring at her drink.

“Well, do you live around here? Like I said, I haven’t really seen you around before, and it’s just… I think… I’d remember seeing someone as beautiful as you if I went out. Then again, this place isn’t for everyone. Do you… maybe you just don’t get out much?”

Darren was blushing. Not a rose, but a bronze, dark blood rushing under plump, freckled cheeks. Appealing.

But Carmilla didn’t want her.

Because she wasn't Danny.

“Yes, there’s a reason for that,” Carmilla said, tucking a strand of hair back over her left ear. The sapphire on her fourth finger sparkled under the lights of the club. She curled her hand around her glass and offered the girl an apologetic glance.

“Oh, yeah, well, everyone has their reasons, I guess,” Darren said, looking crestfallen and confused. “Is your husband—”

“Wife, sweet cheeks. Why else would I be here?”

“—wife… I mean, how long have you been married?”

“Almost two years.”

“That’s… nice,” Darren said, and Carmilla could tell she was looking for an out. Feeling merciful and fuzzy, Carmilla gave it to her.

“I think that’s her by the door,” Carmilla said, staring at nothing and no one. Sparkles floated at her peripheral vision, like stupefied meteors suspended from the low hanging ceiling. “But lemme tell you, cutie, you certainly boosted my confidence for the night. She’s a hotheaded ginger and I’ll be able to tease her for months now.”

“Oh, oh god—”

“Don’t worry, it’s not like she’ll come after you,” Carmilla said, standing.

She tossed her drink back and shrugged, unable to face her empty apartment for the remaining night hours. The clacking Lithium tablets in her pocket charged her, pleaded with her not to wander the night streets again. Without Danny to stabilize her, the bloodlust felt more consuming. She’d been self-medicating for far too long, had even mixed GHB with her drink before going out, hoping, hoping, wishing and begging that _something_ would get her through. The dancing had tired her instantly, momentary hallucinations disoriented her, but now all she had left was the alcohol.

The alcohol and the memories.

“It’s not like she’ll come after you… not like she can,” Carmilla finished, and exited the club.

 

* * *

 

 

Carmilla didn’t go home.

The Red Raven was only a few streets over, with a far older crowd and much better service. The unaging Adonis of a bartender was rumored to possess Lycan ancestors and a preference for rare meat; she could always count on Thomas to add blood to scotch or bourbon or vodka or gin.

It didn’t really matter what liquid, the blood always stretched, like lava in a solution, chemical vapor in a chamber, across the glass and ice cubes, and coated her poison with red. Web-like strands of erythrocytes coagulated then dissipated into sloshing ambers or clear club sodas. Carmilla loved to watch it; loved for time to halt, like a slow-motion video, and for the blood to stain the drink without clemency, a colorful manifestation of a tainted indulgence.

She drank heavily and conversed with those select faculty she considered scholars of Silas. Friday wasn’t usually their night, so the tavern traffic was regretfully sparse.

“Thomas,” Carmilla nodded a greeting, and shuffled toward the end of the bar, hands stuffed into the pockets of her leather jacket, face sullen as an overcast sky.

“Mircalla,” Thomas replied, shoveling tinkling ice into an old-fashioned tumbler.

Sat at the end of the bar in the lowlight, Carmilla pulled out her Parisian traveling manual. She’d gotten it off of some street urchin in the 20s, traded him a ruby the size of his fist for it, and sent him on his merry way without tearing his jugular from his neck (she did have certain standards… _no kids_ ). She knew the text, cover to cover, words and maps and wear stains down to the page, but she still traveled with the book on her person at all times. Carmilla traced the lines of the Seine, tapped the dots of major landmarks, circled and annotated brasseries she held a particular fondness for. The book was a strange comforting mechanism of bygone days, when love was still a fallacy and the night was all, when uncertainty was nonexistent because her surety was immortality and loneliness.

And she’d traded that beguiling, pleasant superiority for what?

Love?

For worry and mistrust and ferocious attachment, for longing so potent it made her inner cavities ache like an overexerted muscle. She physically _throbbed_ at Daniele’s absence and wondered, spitefully, ironically, if that low, bass-like throbbing was a dead heart boosted back to beating.

 

* * *

 

  ** _Eight Months Ago_**

 

“Nine months. You can totally do nine months,” Danny said, rolling her socks with the brutal efficiency of a general.

But Danny wasn’t a general.

She was just a captain. Mighty impressive for a 27-year-old female joining up as late as she did, but it wasn’t overly impressive to Carmilla. She’d wasted brigadier generals and cavalry leaders and admirals alike; a lowly captain was nothing to her.

Until she married one of them.

“That’s not the _point_ and you know it,” Carmilla sat, face blank. Derisive sneers and snarky comments were for minor annoyances, for irritating nuisances of bothersome (but ultimately trifling) status.

Seriousness she reserved for her own terror. And right now, Carmilla was serious as the grave, for she was terrified.

“Let me do it now,” she pleaded, standing from her bedside and crossing to Daniele. “The Guard was never supposed to do a tour in the first place, and now they’re sending you back for the second? I can’t… I don’t think I can bear to take that chance again.”

“I told you how I feel about turning before fighting.”

Carmilla passed by the row of platinum-plated picture frames atop the dresser, the photographs judging her silently; staring back at her were earlier versions of herself, versions frequently found posing with the crew from Silas or with Daniele alone.

Carmilla wasn’t always smiling in the photographs, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t always joyful. In so many pictures, especially the later ones with Daniele, she could see the enigmatic spark in her own eye, a glint of amusement, the quirk at the corner of her left lip:

Riding Daniele piggy-back, a candid snap-shot Perry had taken once they had returned from a three-hour outing to the bookstore where they'd lost themselves in recommendations and surprisingly pleasant conversation; posed around the table at the fancy restaurant for Laura’s farewell dinner, when the cupcake had gotten her acceptance letter for grad school at USC; Danny’s favorite, where Carmilla’s eyebrow was arched in fashionable derision and her focus was on the camera but Danny, Daniele, had turned and studied her and seen something different for the first time (Danny called it their ‘moment’ picture); and then Carmilla’s favorite, of their wedding, when Daniele had astonished all in attendance by wearing a pink-tinted strapless A-line number that stopped at her knees, no shoes, an ornate arrangement of flowers in her hair and not a speck of makeup on her face. Her eyes were blue and her smile ebullient, her gait was a challenge and her vows eternal, and Carmilla was so flabbergasted by the gorgeous pomp and circumstance that Danny had had to place a hand at her elbow to even get her to speak.

The one moment Carmilla could recall where she was at a loss for cheeky comebacks.

She’d removed herself from her pedestal to join herself to Danny in the mortal world, with the knowledge that Danny, fierce and steadfast, would consent to joining her damnation at the proper time.

Carmilla thought that time was now.

Danny, less so.

“But what if something… what if something _happens_?” Carmilla asked, cursing herself for trembling.

“’Calla,” Danny soothed, an endearment the Gingersnap had only been able to get away with on the most dire of occasions. “This is… I can’t let you turn me before I go. I would have an unfair advantage. If we get into a firefight and the blood starts pouring… who’s to say, in a new state like that, that I wouldn’t turn on my team? There’s… it’s an issue of integrity.”

“It is _war_ , Danny! Take every advantage you can get!”

“I can’t do that, and you know it.”

“You said you were okay with it,” Carmilla snapped. “We’ve talked about this, you imbecile. So I can… so you’ll… so we can be _together_. You’ve run headlong into some stupid fights in the past, Red Vine, but this one takes the cake.”

“How is fighting the supernatural on a regular rotation during my collegiate career any different than the rotation they’re putting me on now?”

“You shouldn’t have been fighting then! The amount of foolhardy schemes you and Laura cooked up, not to mention those Zeta dolts and the Gingersquad—”

“But I did. We did. And I survived more battles on the grounds of Silas than I’ll see in the upcoming months in the desert. I’m _helping_ people, Carmilla. It’s what I do. You’ve known that since you met me. What’s the deal?”

“I can’t stop you from going, I know that… I just…” Carmilla trailed off. She didn’t have to vocalize it. Danny knew how afraid she was.

Danny had always known that Carmilla was a coward.

But she went ahead and married her anyway.

“The day I get home, you can do it,” Danny said, throwing her hair back over her shoulder. She straightened from her task at the bedside and ran an agitated hand over her scalp. “The very day. I promise. It’s only nine months. You know how many monsters I killed at Silas during a nine month stint? The numbers are staggering, Nightwalker. And really, what is nine months of your life in the grand scheme of immortality?”

“It’s forever if you’re not in it, you damned-wannabe-martyr,” Carmilla mumbled toward the floor.

Danny chuckled and zipped her overlarge duffel bag, all scratchy cotton fibers and olive drab.

“I will miss that,” Danny grinned sedately, placing her arms around Carmilla’s waist. “Those cute little nicknames you give me: Gigantor, Morning Breath, Big Foot, Imbecile, and now, damned-wannabe-martyr. They’re so kind and loving.”

Carmilla buried her face in Danny’s neck. The miniature metal balls that comprised her chain of dog-tags felt like glacier ice against Carmilla’s nose tip, massive and cold and immovable.

This giant _thing_ that reeked suspiciously of honor was keeping Carmilla from her forever.

“I could do it anyway,” Carmilla spoke to her neck, felt her canines sharpen to carnivorous points. She nudged Danny back against the wall and Danny let her; and it was so damned _enraging_ , as if Gingersnap suspected she lacked resolve, as if she knew Carmilla wouldn’t follow through. “I could, without your consent, and you would eventually get over it. I should do it,” Carmilla grumped, nibbling the pale column of freckled skin. She took Danny’s wrists from her waist and pinned them to either side of her, like an insect on a corkboard, awaiting magnified study. “You deserve it, Gingersnap.”

Danny lifted her head, grinning that winsome grin, and placed a kiss to the top of Carmilla’s skull.

“But you won’t,” Danny said, and Carmilla hated the smile she heard in the refusal.

“And why’s that?”

“Because you love me,” Danny said simply. “As much as I know you hate to admit it.”

“Danny—”

“Calla…” Danny looked down at her, regal in army greens, braver than a lion and dumber than a post, to Carmilla’s estimation. “Let me finish my job, and I’ll give you your forever.”

“Do you swear it?”

“I am going to fight so hard for you.”

“Swear to come back to me.”

“I can only swear to what I know, and I can’t know that.”

“Then let me—”

“No, Mircalla. Grant me my feeble humanity for another few months. Let me be brave without a safety net. It’s not the same without the risk.”

“ _I know_ ,” Carmilla seethed. “It’s less foolish this way.”

“It’s more _dangerous_ if I’m changed.”

“Danny… Daniele….” Carmilla pleaded, dropping Danny’s wrists, retreating from Danny’s space. She brought her hands up to her face and ran pressurized fingers over her cheeks, tried to breathe and compartmentalize cumbersome emotions and poor outcomes, bad statistics and landmines of probability. “Will you do it for me? Please?”

“I… You know I would do anything, _anything_ for you,” Danny answered. The unwavering strength underscoring her words lilted with hope, with relentless belief. “I would die for you, Calla.”

Danny chucked Carmilla’s chin upward, and beamed down with the force of the sun.

“In fact, I’m _going_ to die for you, nine months from today. I’d tell you to mark it on your calendar, but I know you don’t keep one.”

“But I… but I _love_ you, Danny.”

“You damn well better. Or else all that dough I spent on a ring and a hospital-regulation refrigerator was just money down the drain.”

“Must you makes jokes at a time like this? At my expense?”

“When has ours ever been a fair love? An easy love? You wouldn’t take me if I didn’t infuriate you, inspire you, fight and fear you. And you might not think it now, but you love me for my stubbornness. You’ve got a pretty prominent strain of it, too, so you can chalk it up to narcissism.”

“Why are you talking like this is an ending? It doesn’t have to be,” Carmilla felt the damp sting of a hot poker surge to her eyes and wondered, fleetingly, when she had last cried.

“Do you remember the first time we kissed?” Danny asked her. “It was… after Laphilformes’s resurrection, after the zombie infestation, and that time the Summer Society drank those potions meant only for wargs.”

“You were going to fight an ogre. By yourself. Like an _idiot_ ,” Carmilla supplied, running her hands over Danny’s white ribbed tank.

The black nail polish she sported looked like oil stains on the blank cotton of Danny’s shirt. Carmilla hoped she wasn’t a stain, of much greater magnitude, on Danny Lawrence’s life.

“You’d sent me off in the other direction for some enchanted axe—”

“The Hatchet of Irinol,” Danny nodded, and Carmilla felt the episode coming back to her, the memory returning.

So few of Carmilla’s memories were substantial. There were impressions, patterns; for specific instances were less distinct in a life of centuries. The truly impactful recollections, however, were nearly always associated with a person. And that day that Danny had run off, weaponless, determined to take on a beast thrice her size and nearly as bull-headed, had triggered something involuntary and unsettling within the vampire. The thought of losing Gingersnap, to her own inanity, to her bravery, to Silas or the world or to anything in general… immediately became unacceptable.

Carmilla had grasped Danny by the front of her red and white baseball t-shirt and thrown her against the private door in the Summer Society lodge. Danny had stared, caught off-guard with bugging eyes and flaring nostrils, until Carmilla had risen on tip-toes and mushed their faces together in an aggressive, sloppy lip-lock. Tension turned pliant instantaneously. Danny had grabbed her torso and pulled her flush and sucked against her swearing mouth until they broke, glaring and clenching at each other, their pants betraying their supposed disinterest.

“There’s more where that came from if you make it back alive, She-Hulk.”

Danny had nodded slowly, had leaned back in and met Carmilla with tenderness, before darting off to kill an ogre.

And it had snowballed into an avalanche of passionate affection from that moment forward. Because loving Danny Lawrence was just like hating Danny Lawrence. Easy. Entertaining. Vital. Unavoidable. Disconcerting.

Wholly outside of Carmilla’s scope.

“You remember?” Danny prompted, backing Carmilla to the edge of the bed so that her knees hit the side of the mattress and she collapsed in a heap of pale skin and black lace. Their extended mattress shook a bit under her weight, the duvet on top wrinkling from pressure. Carmilla clutched at the folds and picked at a stray thread, unable to answer.

Carmilla sat mutely, and surveyed Danny as she tossed the overlarge duffel bag from the bedside to the floor. Danny put her hands to the hem of her tank, and waited for Carmilla to speak.

“I remember,” Carmilla whispered.

_How could I ever forget?_

Danny removed her tank top and reached to unbuckle the belt at her hips.

“You kissed me like I was going off to battle,” Danny said, wiggling the pants down over her thighs. Danny was a soldier, all muscle, all heart, and Carmilla needed only to look at her to remember how beautifully breakable she was.

“You were,” Carmilla swallowed. “You did.”

“And I won.”

“Danny… it’s not the same.”

“You’re right, it’s not,” Danny said, casting a careless glance at the clock. She heaved an overlarge breath that constricted her frame, and cupped Carmilla’s cheek with fatal hands. “This time… you need to fuck me like I’m going to war. You think you’re up for the challenge?”

Carmilla looked her wife up and down, and wondered how the hell she’d lucked out and simultaneously been cursed with stunning, galling, vexing and gorgeous humanity.

“You have to be at the embassy in an hour,” Carmilla murmured, trying not to get her hopes up. If she had honed any skill in her centuries, it was keeping her expectations staggeringly low. It was another reason why Danny had to constantly reassure Carmilla of her devotion.

Because Carmilla just didn’t fucking believe it. Worthiness had never come easy for her.

“I’m sacrificing nine months. We’ll say the cab was late.”

“Danny—”

“Carmilla, just… just come here.”

Carmilla made love to Danny that afternoon, and cried herself to sleep every morning after she left.


	2. Die for Me

“What’s this?” Carmilla asked Thomas.

He slid a drink of unknown origin before her, a cocktail napkin with two stylized capital Rs winking out from under the coaster. It looked like a top-shelf bourbon, served neat, far too expensive for a Silas student. Someone would’ve had to have known her preferences to order with such specificity.

“Thought you might want to wipe that drool off your lip,” Thomas replied. “You’ve been daydreaming so hard your jaw went slack. Not your best look, Countess.”

“Fuck off, peasant,” Carmilla snapped. “I didn’t order this,” she continued, regaining her senses.

“Courtesy of the lady at the end of the bar.”

“Huh?”

“You should be nice to this one, Carmilla. Soldiers go through hell enough already, the least you can do is offer a smile.”

“What?!” Carmilla said, eyes darting across the floor of the Red Raven.

A soldier outfitted in her desert utility wears slouched against one of the wooden beams supporting the ancient building. The burning torch backlit her head into a silky, shadowed silhouette. Her standard issue shirt was an olivey crewneck, frumpy and overlarge, as if it had been bunched to fitting a twisted frame. Her boots constricted her calves, the pants-leg overflowing from where the article had been tightly tucked into calf-high socks. Carmilla sat too far away to read the name stitched in black on the patch above her left breast. The mossy camouflaged pattern of her trousers was haphazard and out-of-sorts with the bronze and black tones of the tavern, but her hair…

Flaming red and falling, straight as a board over her shoulders and down into the hollow of her throat, against the half circle that comprised the neck-line of her olive undershirt. Two silvery dog tags clinked above her sternum and sparkled like meteors in the tavern lowlight. A red jewel was nestled between the dog tags, a ring, strung on the necklace for safekeeping. She held a mug of ale in her left hand and toasted Carmilla with it, the other hand held tight to her body in some strange black contraption of Velcro, cloth and plastic.

Carmilla stood with such force the stool clattered out from beneath her.

“For God’s sake, Mircalla. I’d tell you not to have a coronary if I knew you were capable,” Thomas swore, setting his broom aside and lifting the bar partition with the disgruntled resentment of one overworked and underpaid. He set the stool upright, but all action was lost on Carmilla.

Carmilla stared into the shadows with the one feeling she’d trained herself to quash upon recognition: hope.

“Hey, Nightwalker.”

Carmilla choked, a hand flying to her lips to suppress a sob.

Danny emerged from the shadows, arm in a sling and a smirk on her face. She sauntered forward with an unflappable air, smug, and Carmilla _hated_ her, and _loved_ her so much she wanted to kiss that smirk to destruction.

“You’re… here,” Carmilla finally managed. “But you’ve got… there’s…”

“They give you early leave when your rotator cuff’s shot,” Danny finished. “Quite literally.”

“Forty-one days. You have forty-one days left.”

Danny smiled, and placed the stein of ale onto the bar top.

“I’m finished, ‘Calla. They screwed me over in an ambush, but at least I’m back for good.”

“You’re…” Carmilla drew closer, afraid to step too near Danny for fear she would dematerialize, like cigarette puffs on the wind. “This is real?”

“Why would it not be?”

“Danny—”

“You gonna make a soldier wait to kiss her wife?”

Carmilla approached her, cautious as a fawn entering a clearing. She hesitantly reached forward, fingers curling over Danny’s uninjured forearm. She ran her thumb over the freckles there, freckles she had counted and kissed and bit and licked and traced, and marveled at how they didn’t quite stand out against a wrist tanned to darker shades.

She imagined dessert sun blistering pale skin.

Carmilla looked up and there Danny was, a scab healing over her left cheekbone, a crooked grin, youthful in its mischievousness, and eyes so blue she could convince herself there was redemption in them, baptism and forgiveness and her third-time’s-a-charm chance, all staring down at her with blazing allegiance.

So Carmilla kissed her; kissed Danny, who seemed no more apparition than that false alarm they’d foolishly investigated at the greenhouses during their final year at Silas. She walked her fingers up Danny’s ribcage until she found them, the dog tags, dangling just above Danny’s breasts. With her lips still glued to her wife’s, Carmilla fingered the tags and the wedding ring looped on the chain; she tangled her hand up in the knowledge of her wife’s identity.

Carmilla kissed her so gently the other woman felt the need to intensify the exchange, to slip her tongue forward and tickle, prod, tease, for Carmilla would not overstep the fragility of the moment.

“You want to take this some place a little more private?” the red head asked. “I believe I made a promise to you, and I try to make good on my promises.”

Carmilla nodded, and allowed herself to be whisked off into the night by Daniele, admitting, with only a meager amount of reluctance, that she appreciated being saved.

 

* * *

 

 

“Are you high?” Danny finally asked, once they’d made it a few blocks from the tavern.

The air was heavy and humid, dreamlike, in that Carmilla felt ultimately immersed in the sensation of the night. Every time Danny’s scratchy uniform brushed her skin she shuddered, thankful, full to bursting of such damned _gratitude_ that her least favorite article of clothing on the God-forsaken planet had returned to rub her the wrong way. The sky itself was a mottled violet, overcast and syrupy from the atmospheric discharges of the city lights. There were no stars, but for the first time since her interment Carmilla couldn’t find it in herself to care.

Cracks in the sidewalk; delirium pounding her skull; drugs and alcohol and nicotine in her system; beggars huddled against bridges; and inundating, never-ending imperfection but… _Danny was here!_ —so everything else seemed to fade away.

“Why do you ask?” Carmilla hummed throatily.

“Because you look more spacey than Major Tom,” Danny replied.

Under normal circumstances, Danny would’ve killed her for even considering drugs. Gingersnap hated anything that could severely affect her state, but these weren’t normal circumstances.

This was _forever_.

“You can’t have missed me that much,” Danny went on, threading her fingers into Carmilla’s as they walked along. “I know from your letters that you spent the first three months being pissed as all hell.”

“Pissed, yes. Beside myself?” Carmilla lingered over the words, brushing the back of Danny’s hand with her index finger. “Extremely.”

“Thank you for letting me go. You’re stronger than you think you are, ‘Calla.”

“You’ve never seen the best in me,” Carmilla answered, stopping Danny underneath a flowering Rowan tree.

The branches curved and drooped in extremes, parabolas of wood and blooming white leaf, so that Carmilla and Danny stood under a makeshift arch, a transitional space of their own making, between now and _forever_.

“You’ve always seen me for what I am. Strong? Very rarely. Coward? Heh,” Carmilla harrumphed, distractedly picking at the bark on the tree. "More than I'd like to admit."

“Besotted?” Danny joked.

“On occasion,” Carmilla returned, allowing her hands to roam Danny’s uninjured side. “You’ve only ever asked me to be more than I was on one occasion, this past time when you left,” she muttered, stepping into Danny’s one-armed embrace. “And I’ll thank you for never asking it again.”

Danny leaned down and pressed her lips to Carmilla’s. It was thick and slow, cough syrup unclogging a stoppage, spring pollen residing in nasal cavities. Sinus pressure, the kind that takes root and settles inside of your skull, lies there, and makes you miserable. The kind of kiss that without, one would have to self-medicate; not that Carmilla knew anything about that.

Danny’s absence infected her.

Danny’s kiss? Antibody. Remedy. Medication. A drug, perhaps, in its own debilitating way.

“What about you?” Danny asked, eerie and Elvin in the daybreak.

“What about me?” Carmilla returned, slightly perplexed.

Carmilla waited while Danny took her hand. Her palm danced in those long, elegant fingers, tapered and sturdy, occasionally blistered or battered, but always assured, unfailing; Danny could pick her up with those hands and hold her, carry her into forever. During their first battle together, the soldier had carried her out of the darkened pit, back when Carmilla had reviled her, had never even thought to love her. Carmilla could scarcely imagine the dedication, the staggering commitment that Danny internalized, carrying Carmilla home in the brumous dawn.

“You’re asking me to… to be more than I am,” Danny whispered. “To be like… to be like you.”

Carmilla squeezed Danny’s hand, then brought it to her lips. She kissed a healing knuckle and tried to sear her promise into Danny’s skin.

She wished to tattoo perpetuity onto the back of Danny’s hand, her lip print a brand, a scar, a symbol of _always_ and _evermore_.

“Are you having second thoughts?” Carmilla asked.

“No, I'm not! I mean, I might… I've, uhm, I guess... I’ve seen enough cruelty on tour to know that what you are isn’t cruel," Danny finally said. "It’s not evil. I’ve seen evil and… Carmilla, you’re not evil.”

“What am I then?”

“Well, stuck with me, if you turn me,” Danny smiled, and squeezed Carmilla’s hand in return. “But really, you’re… you’re my forever.”

“You’re such a _sap_ , Lawrence,” Carmilla commented. She’d never admit she was thinking the same, thinking that perhaps hope did, in fact, have a place in her life.

“What’s it feel like?” Danny asked, tugging her out from under the trees.

The sky was lighting to gradients of gray and yellow, dawn preparing to wash the city in the buttery golds of unfiltered sun beams. At the corner of their apartment block, they loitered beside a flower vendor, who transported chilled bouquets from the refrigerated interior of his van to the stands and frames that comprised his kiosk. Carmilla whiffed the scented spectrum from lilac to rose, daisy to lily. She could even track the smell of dough in an oven; loaves were cooking and steaming at the bakery three blocks east that Danny systematically demolished after shitty teaching days. Birds were chirping obnoxiously, though if this were some pastoral romance of reunited lovers, Carmilla supposed she could see the appeal. Harboring that notion without any bitter dregs of contempt found Carmilla checking herself, wondering at her own satisfaction.

It would likely be a beautiful morning that Carmilla would love to miss, wrapped up instead in the snug embrace of an overlarge ginger in their bedroom, fingers lodged inside each other and blood pooling at the corners of their lips.

Carmilla could think of nothing better.

“The being?” Carmilla asked for clarification to Danny's posed question. “Or the… the turning?”

“I know how you… how you are, so, I guess the turning. Is it true what they say?”

“I really need to meet this ‘they’ that you humans collect your ideas from,” Carmilla answered. “ _They’re_ so woefully misinformed I can do naught but chuckle at the theories, and I don’t chuckle often.”

“Don’t I know it,” Danny said, eyeing the street vendor setting up his flower stand. “But I’ve heard it’s like… they equate it to… uhm,” Danny ran her free hand through her hair and a pang of _want_ hit Carmilla so sharply in the gut she almost doubled over. She had missed that nervous tick, Danny tearing at her scalp whenever she couldn’t get the words out.

“All the literature… the stories that I’ve read, well, they’re fiction, written more as cautionary tales, by idiotic men with agendas—”

“I’m immortal, but even I don’t have all day, Gingersnap,” Carmilla quipped.

“Theysayit’ssexual,” Danny blurted, either from fear or embarrassment, Carmilla could not determine. “The biting. The transforming,” Danny finished with a bashful whisper, which, really didn’t seem like her Gingersnap at all.

The woman could fight armies and sling bullets, but conversing about a minor trifle like death? A little pain, a startling orgasm?

Danny had always seemed more secure in herself.

But then again, turning was scary. _Change_ was scary. The day she’d placed Danny’s ring on her hand she’d shook so hard her muscles cramped and twitched, not for fear of Danny but for fear of alteration, of a shifting mindset that had once focused solely on her person but that now focused on an immense care for _two_.

“It’s like coming, right?” Danny asked shyly, pulling Carmilla closer.

“Yes… it’s…” Carmilla plucked a petal from an overlarge sunflower; there was the gangly stem, the substantial, lemony petals, the huge bud, all exploding with forceful energy.

Danny Lawrence. Just a ten-foot sunflower.

“It’s like _be_ coming,” Carmilla clarified, rubbing the satiny yellow leaves between forefinger and thumb. Dawn was breaking and so was she, breaking under Danny’s trust and love, breaking because forever, _forever_ , FOREVER stood right before her.

“Are you prepared?” Carmilla asked her.

“I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,” Danny answered.

Carmilla smirked, and leisurely gathered up three long-stemmed sunflowers. The vendor wasn’t prepared for a sale so early, but he grudgingly secured the miniature bouquet with a piece of twine, then wrapped the stems in soaking newspapers. His smile brightened when Carmilla gave him a single bill for a hundred Euros, and subsequently dragged Danny back to their building.

 

* * *

 

 

As soon as they crossed the threshold of the apartment, Carmilla’s lips were on Danny’s neck. She pressed Danny into the back of the door and shoved her leather-encased knee toward the apex of camouflaged legs.

“Babe, you’re a little overeager, don’t you think?” Danny squirmed, scrabbling to keep the flowers in her grasp while Carmilla pinned her wrist against the wall.

“You’ve been gone eight fucking months and you’re about to let me bite you. That makes me horny as hell, Captain.”

“Fuck, ‘Calla,” Danny groaned.

Carmilla could feel the tension in Danny’s neck where she was sucking; saw Danny straining, shifting her head up and away to provide a better angle for her shorter frame. Danny’s uninjured arm felt limp in Carmilla’s hold, but her body was taut as a crouching wolf’s. Like Danny was gearing up, getting ready, to pounce and fight and maul and savor.

Danny was willing, and Carmilla was merciless.

“Lemme… let— _God_ , lemme put—” Danny heaved and stuttered, and Carmilla felt the trill of satisfaction slither up her spine over Danny’s inability to compose a coherent thought.

Carmilla released her wrist and grabbed the back of Danny’s head, dragged her down so that Carmilla met her mouth and rubbed, and soothed, then bit and attacked those lips until she felt Danny wince above her.

“Alright there, Gingersnap?” Carmilla puffed heavily, the heat from her breath rebounding off of Danny’s skin to hit her squarely on her own face.

“Yeah, just…” Danny bit her bottom lip and turned aside, tears welling at the creases of her eyes.

Carmilla stepped back, but placed a hand on Danny’s jawline. She traced the healing scab over Danny’s cheek, and allowed Danny a moment to collect herself.

"I didn't hurt you, did I?"

“No, I just... I mean, I missed you, for one,” Danny choked, leaning into Carmilla’s touch. “But I don’t know how much I can do for you, love. My arm is just—”

“We’ll take it easy,” Carmilla said, taking the flowers from Danny’s hand and leading them into the kitchen.

With great reluctance did Carmilla release her wife, bypassing the island and scouring the cabinets to find an appropriate something to stick those ginormous flowers into. She emerged with Danny’s pitcher, the one Gingersnap used in summertime to make lemonade and strawberry-flavored power drinks. There were little beach umbrellas on the clear plastic, purple and blue and green and yellow. Carmilla had stolen it from an all-goods store during one of their first vacations together. Danny had scolded her relentlessly for the action, but had somehow grown overly fond of the pitcher. Blame it on the colors. Or the fact that no one had committed acts of banditry in Danny’s honor before.

Carmilla turned the tap and filled the pitcher, while Danny rooted about their miscellaneous drawer.

“What are you looking for?”

“Scissors,” Danny answered. “You’re supposed to snip the ends.”

“I think that’s roses, Cap.”

“Oh,” Danny said. She shut the drawer with a subdued _thud_. “My bad.”

“I didn’t marry you for your horticultural knowledge,” Carmilla said.

“Obviously.”

Carmilla smirked lecherously.

“No, but after I saw you do the splits warming up for one of your Adonis hunts—”

“Carmilla—”

“Your legs just go on forever, Red,” Carmilla purred leisurely, draping herself against the countertop. “And you know how I feel about forever.”

“Do you… should we just get on with it?” Danny asked.

“You’re not making me feel any easier about the act phrasing it like that, Gingersnap. Are you sure you still want this?” Carmilla parried, slinking over toward Danny like a jungle cat. “Now that you’re back, the issue isn’t as pressing.”

“Yeah, I… I think we should just do it quick. I’m almost ten years older than you now, I don’t want to start getting weird looks. The quicker we do it, the quicker I learn to… to deal with things.”

“With being a vampire?”

Danny looked away, and made a move past the counter.

“Do you have blood in the refrigerator? Do you get, like, hungry right after it happens?” Danny opened the door to the appliance and stared into the manufactured light.

Carmilla paused, knowing Danny would rather focus on the logistics than the nightmarish big picture. The fact that she would be fundamentally, eternally changed.

Danny had seen war, had seen death, but this was _damnation_.

“You’ll want to hunt,” Carmilla said soberly.

“The saved blood won’t be enough?” she asked, cataloging the bags.

“It’s not about the blood,” Carmilla said. “It’s about the kill.”

“Oh.”

“Yes.”

…

…

…

“Do you…” Danny eyed her sling, shifting uncomfortably from toe to boot-footed toe. She shut the refrigerator, throwing herself back into natural dimness. “Is there… Carm, you know I don’t _blame_ you, but is there anyway—”

“We don’t have to do this.”

“But… but I want to be with you,” Danny challenged, voice edged with dissatisfaction.

“And you can be. You can be with me as a mortal.”

“Everyone else you ever cared for left you,” Danny said, staring into the middle space of their kitchen.

Motes of dust clouded the trickling grey light of dawn, attempting to shine through their small window.

“When I told you I wanted to spend our lives together, I didn’t just mean _my_ life. I meant _our_ lives. And if that means… if I have to… forget dying for you, ‘Calla. If it meant I got to be with you, I would _kill_ for you.”

Sunbeams blasted the room in an atomic flash. Disoriented, kaleidoscopic dots swam in her vision, so Carmilla shrank back into the hallway from force of habit. But Daniele stayed standing at the kitchen counter, resolute and unwavering, waiting for Carmilla to kill her.

Carmilla didn’t know if she could bear Danny in the darkness. Gingersnap was a morning glory, eight a.m. lectures, faculty lunches, then afternoon practices. Gangly, ten-foot tall sunflowers. Not night. Not death. Danny always fought for _life_.

Carmilla didn’t think she could do it.

“Danny—”

“No,” Danny said, stalking towards her. “I can do this, I... I _want_ to do this. You've got to hold up your end, Nightwalker.”

Danny shouldered Carmilla into the hallway, and backed her against the wall. The picture frames and Perry’s gifted canvases shuddered from the force; Danny herself shook with nervous exertion.

“Fuck me, and bite me, and let me have forever.”

And, well, how could Carmilla refuse?

 

* * *

 

 

“Where do you wish to go?” Carmilla asked, two fingers buried inside of Danny’s trembling body.

She was wrapped around Danny from behind, a favored position of Gingersnap’s they’d discovered early in their fucking. They took into account very un-sexy considerations like execution, pacing, angles, friction and height differences; but hovering over Gingersnap’s strong shoulder, Danny leaning back into her vice-like embrace, and those gorgeous, eternal legs shaking, spasming off the sides of their mattress while Carmilla’s hand pulsed at her center…

Danny clawed at the back of Carmilla’s head with her uninjured limb and whimpered her pleasure.

“I can t-t-take you anywhere, once it ha-ha-happens,” Carmilla continued, breathless and heady, Danny’s carotid thundering beneath her nose.

Warmer than magma.

Liquid fire.

“We’ll have everything, Daniele,” Carmilla murmured, depressing Danny’s clitoris with her thumb.

It was enough to make the Gingersnap gasp, and arch, and contort her spine so severely she nearly wrenched her injured arm out of socket once again. Carmilla knew how to torture, how to tease and tighten, almost like they’d been intimate for over half a decade. Almost like they loved each other so well that Carmilla could very well snarl, and wound, and ravage if she so pleased, but knew with critical exactitude the line she would never dare cross with Daniele in her arms.

Carmilla cherished the knowing, knowing Daniele so, so well.

“’God, ‘Calla—”

“Think of all the things you’ll get to do,” Carmilla instructed, licking a line up Danny’s neck. Her teeth were aching, how she imagined a root canal would feel if there’d been dental terminology in 1698. Her canines _needed_ that flesh, and her being _craved_ that blood.

“’Calla, I’m—oh, ‘Calla, babe, I’m— _nnngh_!”

Carmilla pressed a kiss to Danny’s hairline, felt her eyes dilate to black with predatory intent. She corkscrewed her fingers and jammed them in up to the knuckle; felt Danny’s elation through the suctioning contractions.

“You’re ready?”

Danny couldn’t reply. Her dog tags and ruby wedding ring clinked in the valley between her breasts. Her eyes were clenched so hard tears brimmed at her lashline. Her jaw fell slack, her cheeks flushed rose. Carmilla felt Danny’s head flop against her shoulder and shake, up and down, in what the vampire took as nodded consent.

“I love you, Danny,” Carmilla said, then drained the life from her wife.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops I lied. It's always like, I know where I want to go, but it ends up taking 5k more words to get there. Two chapters was far too conservative of an estimate. So you get three. 
> 
> And the more I write this, the less it feels like an actual soldier/army AU, and more like a, "Danny joined the Guard after she graduated and got together with Carmilla and got assigned to protect the embassy in Styria but then she got shipped out and I know that's not how that works but I'm rolling with it to work in Lawstein" type of AU, but I don't feel that's short enough to put in the tags :P 
> 
> Feedback and speculation appreciated!


	3. But Darling Just Don't Lie to Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Getting rather triggery here on violence. You've been forewarned.

_Turning is better than drinking, because you’re not slurping so much as sipping, tasting, poisoning and contaminating. And you’re not just sipping blood in the now, but the blood of a past, the blood of an existence:_

_Three years old, and a pig-tailed ginger girl scraped her knee into a nasty strawberry. The blood slid down her leg but Danny refused to cry, fisting her little hands together even as her mother, blue-eyed and strong-jawed, applied a tincture of medical iodine._

_Six, and three taller, freckle-faced boys were convincing her to tie a string around a wobbly incisor. A door slammed, and she slurped iron._

_Eight, and the red was mixed with white this time. Splintering white, and pain hot as furnace fumes, lancing her forearm from wrist to elbow. A terrible scream, and the leaves overhead faded from her vision to screws and rods that made her feel like the bionic woman._

_More instances of injury, a clumsy childhood recalled, until twelve; more agile, adept, when a cleated foot slashed open the meat of her thigh at a crucial point during the match. She had to hit the bench. The first time blood mixed with real anger._

_Six months later, the first bleeding of a woman, when anxiety and confusion were rather overwhelming, because that strong-jawed lady was no longer there to explain._

_Three more years, when a sting across the face was followed by the taste of blood, pooling at the corner of her lip. The boy was handsome and drunk, though neither state afforded him excuse. Danny hit back, and won, licking the blood from her chin. She held her head a little higher every time the boy called her a dyke in the hallway._

_Pin prick at her finger, puncture at the elbow interior, squeezing a stress ball to fill bloody bags in a hospital._

_Blood, but not her own, covering her hands. Slick, diluted from a dark night rain. Classic. Asphalt. Twisted metal. The faintest hint of alcohol and bad decisions, glass lodged in a torso, and Danny doing her best to compress it all._

 

_She failed._

 

_Slicing her hand open her freshman year, a blood pact, sisters this time (instead of so many brothers) who were strong and admirable._

_A gash, running down the length of her nose. She smelled brimstone and zinc, felt splinters in her palms from gripping the stake so hard, swinging furiously away beneath the Lustig._

_Silas, Silas, fights and battles, bloodshed relatively contained._

_Later on, at basic, scratches of minimal matter, a nosebleed after a wayward punch._

_Deployment, and terror, and duty, and… oh God, there it is._

_A child, with an explosive strapped to his torso._

_One of her men, convulsing from the shock, blood everywhere because his arm lay fifty yards to the east, the results of an IED missed during a sweep._

_Bullets in torsos. Not smithereen-blowing, or projectiled bodies, not like a Tarantino film. Far more terrible, far more realistic: just blood, steady, flowing, staining cadmium yellow sands crimson._

_Cold blood, nearly black, secured in clear plastic bags at the Quonset hut that functioned as a medical facility, awaiting administration to those who had lost, and will lose, their life’s liquid on the battle field. Dashing outside to breathe, away, away, because men were screaming in there. Heat waves blurred the dunes and metal buildings into sketches of unreality. Joanna came out and told her to get a grip, passed her a letter (postmarked Styria), and Danny collapsed at the camp in selfish gratitude._

_Blood, and agony, at her neck and back and shoulder. A hole, obsidian and humid and visceral, gaping like a hollowed-out gourd where her deltoid had once been. And it hurts—_ fuck _—hurts as bad as the time she’d pulled her big brother out of the sedan and the glass had slit her arm open. She’d failed him then, didn’t stop the bleeding._

_She wouldn’t fail her company now._

_She would get them home._

_She would come home._

_She wouldn’t fail Carmilla._

_(Ruby at her chest. Blood in her fridge. Pain in her ass. Forever, because only the supernatural could weasel its way into a heart shielded with Kevlar.)_

_She put a compress on her arm and switched the stock of the repeater rifle to her weak side, shooting left-handed. Not Rambo… far too flashy. She was a real soldier. All about tactics. Execution. Situation assessment, and then response. Judgment call._

_Make the right call, Lawrence!_

_She got out and, miraculously, she stopped the bleeding._

 

* * *

 

 

“Danny?” Carmilla called softly.

The drapes were drawn in their room, the duvet crumpled in a heap on the floor. Danny lay naked and still, her chest unmoving, her head propped in Carmilla’s lap. Two puncture wounds flared pink and puffy at her neck, inflamed, where crusty drops of merlot blood stuck to her skin like glue residue after craft time. Carmilla stroked her hair, vigilant and cautious.

“Darling,” Carmilla murmured hesitantly. “Daniele, wake up.”

Danny stirred, soundless, then blinked grey eyes up at Carmilla. Carmilla watched her lick her lips and purse them; her brow furrowed to rutted wrinkles of confusion.

“Are you… are you okay?”

“I—ah,” Danny breathed, rolling her shoulders against Carmilla’s bony knees. “I’m…I…” Danny sat up, placed a hand over her breast.

Her brows weren’t merely furrows any more. They were canyons of worry, of daze and wonderment. She rubbed her chest, clockwise and then counter, over where her dog tags hung. Beat her chest, as if trying to physically loosen phlegm from a bronchial infection. She beat again, and again, coughed twice, then turned tragically toward Carmilla.

“I can’t feel… my… my heart…it’s not…”

“You can still feel,” Carmilla cut her off, and placed her pale hand above Danny’s tanner one. “Your heart may not beat, but don’t ever think you can’t _feel_ , my love.”

“I want…” Danny’s fingernails cut into the backs of Carmilla’s hand, little scythes of indentation, of fright and uncertainty.

“Yes?” Carmilla prompted. “What do you want?”

…

…

…

Grey eyes faded to sheeny silver, and darted about the room with the franticness of a caged animal. Flecks of blue were dying, overrun by gold, then by black, then to a ruby that reflected the jewel in that noose of devotion rubbing her neck raw.

“Blood,” Danny answered throatily, shutting her eyes in defeat.

=================================

 

“Looks like I won’t be needing this anymore,” Danny said, yanking the straps from her sling.

Ripping Velcro noises resonated deeper than death knells. Carmilla turned from the stale light of the refrigerator, then drew the kitchen shades against the morning sun. It wasn’t darkness, just light shrouded, covered, but something she could work with while introducing Danny to the night. The not-quite night.

Danny Lawrence _would_ be turned during the morning hours. Even damned, the woman wasn’t wholly dark.

Meanwhile Carmilla was tired and disoriented and still a little bit high, if the strange sensation of the mushy plastic bag in her hand was any indication. It felt like holding raw meat in plastic, a jellyfish head, motor oil; she poked where she shouldn’t, such that the _squish_ and _slosh_ of blood in bag was both queasy and appetizing. She considered using that single moldy celery stick and adding it to their glasses as a garnish, a faux Bloody Mary. The drink itself was consequential, symptomatic of the moment, but first taste, virginal sips… Danny’s feeding would forever be laced with staggering profundity if she chose not to kill. She retrieved two glasses from the cabinets and began to fill them.

Carmilla was quite caught up in the notions of future taste preferences that she hardly noticed the doorbell.

“I got it,” Danny said, sauntering toward the hallway.

“Babe, you’re not dressed.”

“You’re pouring the thing,” Danny hollered. “I’ll grab a robe, lemme get it.”

“Whoever the hell rings the door bell at seven a.m. should be shot on—”

She heard the knob being jiggled, a hollow _thud_ against a wall.

Carmilla stopped mid-pour; her head jerked and her chin bobbed.

A scuffle.

A crack.

Silence.

Carmilla dropped the bag (a squelchy, sodden _plopping_ splash) and raced with winged feet to the foyer.

“—sight,” she whispered, eyes burning with hungry tears.

Mr. Ryman? Reginald? Rupert? Richard?

It didn’t much matter who he was, past tense, because Danny, Daniele, had the annoying old bat by the shoulders (elevated a good two feet off the floor with her face buried in the slope between jawline and neck) and was currently draining him dry.

He was a nosy neighbor, bothersome, crotchety, the kind of man to come banging on your door at seven fucking a.m. when you’d just had rather violent sex with your wife (headboard thudding into drywall in manic tandem with Danny’s groans). He was the kind of neighbor who liked to yell at you about breaking down boxes when you put your trash out on the street. A pair of round spectacles lay shattered near the open door. A cane with little Scottish terriers carved around the handle was splintered, little flecks of wood embedding themselves in the garish pink carpet of the hallway. The morning paper fluttered in the slurping soundlessness, crossword puzzle half complete.

R-man was a pest, but ultimately, harmless.

The gasping had stopped and the blood spurts had slowed to trickles; his face was ashen and hollow, the sunken cheeks of a famine victim. Vacant, dry eyes. A Holocaust skeleton. His off-white, sleeveless undershirt was wrinkled and food-stained; wiry grey chest hairs and flabby molds of skin sprouted over the slack neckline of his worn shirt.

But now blood, quarts, liters, steins and ales full had been emptied upon the gentleman’s torso, rendering his suspenders slick, the metal catches attached to his elasticated waistband inoperable.

The surprise was in the silence; the stealth and agility Danny had employed to sweep the man in and twist head from neck, the telling _crack_ still reverberating around the walls of their bloody apartment and tunneling into Carmilla’s ear canals. Killing leant itself to cacophony, to raucousness; her kills usually came during nights of drunken revelry, in back alleys with steaming sewer grates and putrid stenches of dumpster refuse saturating the air. They were never particularly quick, never quite this clean. Drinking was survival but killing was… abandon. Puffing out her chest, flexing her muscles and just _doing_ it; she’d learned long ago that she couldn’t pick and choose her kills. It was her nature. Right place, wrong time for a cupcake or a beefcake but control came far less easily than Carmilla would admit.

Carmilla’s fangs ached, extended to lethal points and her head fogged to aggression, the blood, the _blood_ , and Danny (her gorgeous, indulgent, trustworthy _wife_ , dammit), forever with her in damnation and tarred morality and now she didn’t have to feel so _alone_ all the fucking time.

Even when Danny had married her there’d always been the caveat of that fallible humanity. But consenting to turning was a marriage of a different sort. It was a bond sealed in blood, in recognition of a life teetering on the edges of mortals’ ethical constructs. For the pair of them, there were no ethics. No morals. No responsibilities to a higher code. Danny, honor-bound and righteous and shining beacon that she was, had sacrificed those traits to spend forever with Carmilla.

Because Danny _loved_ her.

Danny loved Carmilla more than doing the right thing.

And Carmilla was so elated and flabbergasted by the notion she could hardly stand it.

“There’s not much left,” Danny gurgled at the man’s jugular, squeezing the infirm shoulders, like the body was an utter. A beast to be milked. She extended the corpse away from her body, her elbows locked (effortless), as if she were holding out a tissue for Carmilla’s use.

“’Calla, come feed.”

Not an offer.

Danny released the body and it fell, a masterless marionette. A second _crack_ sounded as it leaked a little more, stained the rug in the entryway. Carmilla stooped and lifted the man with minimal effort, her fangs primed, her stomach grumbling. She took the final dregs of the man’s life blood, but her focus was on the swath of crackling, peeling red painted over Danny’s chin.

Daniele’s eyes were a darkest shade of indigo Carmilla’s had once seen through a high-powered telescope, looking off into the depths of the Milky Way. Danny was posted up in the tiny hallway of the foyer, bloodstained, like she’d been to battle and back. Her hands were propped on either side of the hallway just above her head, silhouetted in the gauzy morning light. The soldier stood, still nude, one leg crossed over the other. The stance was… lax, easy, a lower center of gravity than she normally carried, as if she’d never stood at attention before in her life. As if the vivacity she'd once harbored in a poised torso and tight shoulders had meandered southerly, causing her to slouch into a posture so indolent it seemed confident. As if her only attention, her only focus, was Carmilla and her idle contentment. Danny slinked forward a bit, eyeing Carmilla, grinning; she ran a hand over her scalp and tossed her hair like some filly released to an open paddock for the first time in ages. Like she wanted to gallop into the wilderness, dangers be damned, with her best friend forever.

Carmilla dropped the body and moved to shut the door.

“I wasn’t expecting that,” Carmilla said, turning the deadbolt. She slid the chain in place as well, and kicked the remains of the cane off to the side of the hall.

Then felt a presence behind her, looming and terrible and everything she ever wanted. A hand at the small of her back. A fingertip, sensitized, a Taser of affection, at her elbow. Another finger, devilish, running along the inside hem of her waistband. Bloody breath on her neck. A nose in her hair. The cool _chink_ of dangling metal at her topmost vertebra upended her gut, a windswept nausea.

Carmilla turned her head to the side and smirked, waiting, waiting, waiting…

“What were you expecting?” Danny asked, guiding her around in a tight pirouette, lifting her with the grace of a seasoned dancer.

Danny had always been a rather exemplary human. Strong. Athletic. Tall. Coordinated and whip-smart. Admittedly a little bull-headed, but staggeringly passionate. Gingersnap’s movements had always been controlled and fluid, but humanity meant exertion placed stipulations on the elegance of the motions. Now, with supernatural strength, speed, sight, hearing, taste, smell, etc., Danny would be unstoppable.

Danny propped Carmilla against the doorway and her hands fell to Carmilla’s thighs, picking up first one leg and then the other so that Carmilla could wrap her ankles together at the small of Danny’s back and settle her center against Danny’s bare abdomen. Her arms wound themselves around Danny’s neck, Carmilla staring down into her forever. Danny felt like a gladiator beneath her, ferocious, solid, unstoppable (as if Carmilla could ever deny her). She watched Danny’s eyes dart downward, and bit her lip with a protracted canine once Danny set to untying the drawstring of Carmilla’s sleepshorts.

“Well, I know refinement has never come naturally to you,” Carmilla teased, voice smoked with bourbon and lust. “But it’s considered poor manners to desiccate one’s neighbor.”

“You’re gonna train me then? Promise a lesson in fifteenth-century table manners?” Danny asked, attaching her lips to Carmilla’s neck. Her new teeth scratched the pale skin there, and it burned beautifully. “Hmmmm… Refine me?” Danny growled, nipping an earlobe.

Danny rolled her hips and Carmilla groaned, rainbow starbursts flickering at the periphery of her vision like some friction-induced synesthesia. Danny kissed her and glided, avoiding end tables and wall corners because _she’s a vampire now._ Carmilla now bore witness to the sharpening of her wife's new senses. Those first moments when all you are is hungry and horny and _fuck_ , she’d forgotten it could be like this. Forgotten that the state wasn’t damnation but opportunity, big-L Luxury instead of big-L Lonely.

“I don’t know how I would fare eating in a corset,” Danny murmured.

Pause at the door jamb to the kitchen. Another hip roll. Another starburst.

“I… could… be persuaded to offer you a lesson,” Carmilla ground out, but Danny’s hand on her breast wasn’t really helping her concentration. “If I ever get to see you in a corset,” she amended, attempting (and failing, always failing) to maintain control. The starbursts in her vision weren’t going away either, not when she stared at Danny, not when she closed her eyes.

Danny would change, from blue eyes to green to brown to grey and purple, hair shifting similarly, long and then short and pulled back and curly, and Carmilla felt it was a premonition of every future manifestation of Danielle she’d get to experience, every lifetime or future fashion she’d get to see with her wife beside her.

And she was so happy and the starbursts were so _bright_ she felt she could cry for joy.

“I’ve gotten used to being the teacher,” Danny said, stopping at the kitchen island. “The captain. I like being in charge…” She rammed Carmilla into the edge of the kitchen island and kissed her breathless, grabbed her ass and pulled her hair and loved her til it _hurt_. “And fuck if this immortality bullshit is gonna make me patient because I just can’t wait anymore.”

And it was a little savage, not so much a throw, but a toss, Carmilla lying on the marble-topped island with her shorts around her ankles and spread eagled on her back. The surface was too hard, Danielle unforgiving with her pressure. Disoriented, only momentarily, before Danny was two fingers deep and climbing on top of her, knocking the half poured glasses of blood onto the black-flecked countertop so that Danny was slipping and collapsing onto her because of the lack of traction. Something shattered over her shoulder, sunflowers in blood. But then Danny was licking her hands and moaning, and then kissing Carmilla with iron and wine lips and Danny was _crushing_ her, the weight of blood and love and _forever_ and _everything I never thought I could have_ focusing her kaleidoscopic tunnel vision until Carmilla cried out and her mind faded to starburst, sinking into her gory evermore.

 

* * *

 

 

Carmilla awoke to drizzle and numbness. Muted and grey, sensations lost in her fingertips, her kneecaps, her ankles and shoulders. As if every limb were slowly being sewn back to a rag doll shredded, as if the rag doll were achieving sentience.

The first sniff: iron.

Blood.

The second: cum.

Sex.

But blood prevailed.

As sensation returned, thus did the chill and dampness, of matted, tangled hair stuck to her neck, black liquid liner drawn haphazard and diagonal over her cheekbone, mascara running like jail bars over her face, a bucket of water drenching the alley cat. She rubbed at her wrist and watched the dry, sepia residue cake up into little lines of scab-textured goo, a solid that had once been free-flowing (but time can dry and harden so, so many things).

Dried blood. Everywhere. She was naked and bloody and hung-over and confused.

Carmilla rolled sideways. Softness. Far-away detergent scents, wildflowers on the wind. Lavender. Some marketing ploy called “Cotton Breeze.”

She was in her bed.

Hers and Danielle’s bed.

Where making love was so hard if Danny ever wanted to eat her out, because the Gingersnap’s body was so large she hung off the bed frame.

Carmilla chuckled. Her brain-skull-head-heart-something protested.

But Danny.

That was the important bit.

Bit.

She’d bitten Danny.

Danny was home and _she’d bitten Danny_.

“Danny?” Carmilla called, blinking the fog away.

Her voice was even raspier than usual, an alto gone baritone, cotton-mouth and hoarse.

“D-Danny?” Carmilla rolled over to meet damp sheets, a body-sized puddle of blood drenching the fabric through and likely staining the mattress beneath. Like a cask of wine had been tapped, began dripping, and eventually flooded the right half of the bed.

There was just so damn _much_ of it. Like she’d gone into the refrigerator and taken every bag she’d had and dumped it into place beside her.

She surveyed her body again:

Blood. Dried now, but everywhere. In her mouth, elbow creases, between her fingers and in her armpits, in the ridges of her ribs and between the notches of her spine. As if she’d been swimming in it. As if she’d eviscerated and washed herself in the act.

Ritualistic. Uncontrolled. Numb.

“Danny?” Carmilla tried, more desperately this time around.

She swung her feet over the edge of the bed and tried to stand, teetered, collapsed to the hardwood. Her knee hurt. Pain radiated from her leg; an electronic cattle prod ran the length of her femur and pulsed periodically, pain so acute she’d swear her kneecap was broken.

She looked down at a small whole in her leg, deep, as if someone had shoved a wooden dowel into the squishy half-circle where her miniscus should have been.

Well... it would pass.

The blood trail led out the door of the bedroom, whatever scuffle that took place obviously starting prior to the arrival there. She looked back up at the bed, the middle space between the grey-shaded windows. Heard the rain drizzle. A car horn. The ramshackle clatter of a garage door being lifted, opened by the vendor yanking the chain and the crank into place. She was tired… so, so fucking tired. Vaguely recalled taking some pretty hard hallucinogens, sipping some pretty hard drinks. Caught a glance of the clock on the bedside table.

7:17 a.m.

How was it still morning? She’d… she’d bitten Danielle in the morning.

Nothing made sense. Everything was garbled sensation, like yelling under water, trying to hear through the wall with a glass stuck to her ear.

“Danielle, please,” Carmilla called, feeling smaller than her being, warped and compacted, like someone was shoving her into a coffin and the _thuds_ of dirt being piled atop her were pressing her frame against itself, forcing her to shrink, to lessen. She wasn’t drowning… she was being _crushed._ A power sprayer, a fire hose, aimed at her abdomen and pummeling her with blood, blood, blood, blood—

She was no contortionist. She as no circus act, no strong woman. She was only hum—no. No. No. No. No. No.

“Gi—Gingersnap!” Carmilla yelled, scrambling to stand. Her knee felt like it had exploded, a watermelon dropped from a football stadium. Covered in red, green rind decimated, little black seeds of hate scattered to the winds. “This isn’t fucking _funny_!”

As she stood, she noticed something in the grey on the far side of her bedroom. Danny’s side. The side closest to the window, furthest from the door.

 

========================

 

(“Are we really going to fight about this?” Danny sighed, screwing the final nut in place on their IKEA side table. “I’ve always slept on the left. It’s closest to the door.”

“I want that side.”

“Why?”

“Because I do.”

“That’s not a reason. You’re being petulant.”

“Why do I need a reason?”

“I don’t feel like you, even in your stubborn nonsensicalness, make decisions so arbitrarily,” Danny commented, propping the end table up on its four legs. “Not the best quality, but it’ll suit until we can find something better.”

“You humans make moving such a hassle. I can’t believe we have to wait for the damn appliance guy to get here to deliver the refrigerator.”

“Well, we can’t all live like vagabonds, ‘Calla.”

“Don’t call me that!”

“You like it.”

“About as much as you like sleeping on the right.”

Danny shrugged, then plopped down on the mattress beside Carmilla. She ran a hand over her scalp and Carmilla regarded her silently, eyes focused on the new ruby she’d just put on Danny’s finger two days ago.

“I know it’s not the best neighborhood, or the best apartment—”

“That’s not it,” Carmilla said. “We’ll make do.”

“It’s just all we can afford while I’m teaching adjunct. There’s an Associate Professorship opening up next semester—”

“Danny—”

“And I think I’ve found a new way to bring in a little more monthly cash.”

“Listen, Gingersnap, it doesn’t matter what apartment we’re in. I’d want to sleep on the side closest to the door no matter what.”

“Huh?” Danny asked, quirking her head like a curious puppy. “I don’t understand.”

“I… Not that it would happen, however if… if someone ever intruded… not that I’m suggesting you can’t take care of yourself,” Carmilla started, picking up Danny’s left hand. She traced little patterns over her palm, twisted the engagement ring upright. “But I’m just…”

“A sullen immortal who’d be a decent first line of defense?” Danny supplied.

“Essentially.”

Danny smiled, kissed Carmilla’s forehead, and maneuvered their hands so that she was the one toying with Carmilla’s.

“I’ve… I appreciate the sentiment,” Danny said, “But I don’t need protecting.”

“I know that. And yet… I find that I can’t help myself.”

“See what caring gets you?”

“Endless grief, apparently,” Carmilla snarked.

“Yeah, I… So, I don’t want you to be mad.”

Carmilla’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Why would I be mad?”

“I said I found a way to make some extra cash, at least while I’m still adjunct, still finishing up coursework. And we’d sort of talked about it before—”

Carmilla’s face, if at all possible, drained of color.

“Danny, you didn’t—”

“Every other weekend for starters, the recruiter said I’d probably get a cushy post at the embassy.”

“Daniele, surely you couldn’t have—”

“I joined up.”

…

…

…

“Why?” Carmilla whispered, determinedly _not_ looking at Danny. She’d not give Danny the pleasure of knowing that she cried for her. Loved her so critically.

“For us, ‘Calla,” Danny said, placing a kiss to Carmilla’s temple. “Two year contract, tops, just while I finish up the doctorate. Totally doable. There’s an outpost in Austria where I’ll do long weekends and head down for basic in the summer. I’ll be fine.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Nah, well… when have you ever worried over me before?” Danny joked, and Carmilla could take it no longer.

“Every day. Every hour, minute, every second that you breathe, I worry for you. I worry if I’m good enough, because I know you’re _too good_ , Daniele. I worry constantly that you’ll wise up or do something inane like… like join the fucking _Army_ ,” Carmilla seethed. She felt the tear drop, an acid splash on her wrist.

“Hey,” Danny said, cupping her face gently. Danny’s blistered thumbs swiped at stubborn tears Carmilla couldn’t believe she was allowing to fall. Love could honestly be such a _bitch_. “I…” Danny started, but couldn’t finish. “I mean, I’m… uh…”

“You’re not sorry,” Carmilla supplied.

“No,” Danny answered, “I don’t suppose I am.”

“Well then.”

“Well.”

…

…

…

“I love you,” Danny said.

“And I, you,” Carmilla returned, the ruby on Danny’s finger suddenly mocking. Why had Carmilla chosen _that_ stone? It was jeweled bloodshed.

…

…

…

“You can have the left side,” Danny conceded, and went upfront to wait on the man, delivering that damned refrigerator.)

 

============================

 

“Danny, are you okay?” Carmilla asked, limping toward the end of the bed. She tripped over the large chest that housed their wedding dresses, Danny’s bow, books and linens, but couldn’t find it within herself to curse the piece.

“Danny, please,” Carmilla called, staggering across the room. She was praying the thing she saw on Danny’s side of the bed wasn’t a human foot.

“Danny?” once more, smaller, broken. “Dan—Da—Darren?!” Carmilla cried, staring at a corpse turned bluer than berry.

The girl, the girl from the club, the one who’d tried to… and then she… but what…

“Shit,” Carmilla swore, scrambling to the girl’s side. She didn’t know why she bothered pressing two fingers to what was left of the girl’s neck (she was pretty sure she could see the egg-shell cartilage of the trachea, white and lumpy as a tablecloth after dinnertime).

“Fucking… shit!” Carmilla spat again, addled beyond functioning.

She took in what was left of the body before her (a limb twisted from a socket, a detached appendage stiffening to rigor mortis near the radiator, three loose fingers wrapped around the handle of a small wooden spoon... a body naked, torn and slashed, the victim of some homicidal pervert), the girl with green eyes and a mahogany ponytail had just hit on the wrong person, and now she was dead.

Carmilla tried to think, to _remember_ , to believe that **_this wasn’t it_** , not her sentence, not her mistake, not her fault, goddammit.

Danny had come home… Carmilla had left the bar and gone to… to their apartment? Or to the… to the flower shop? No, was it the bakery? The Styrian Siren? Silas campus? The tavern?

Carmilla clutched her head; it felt like one of those old Styrian biddies was beating on her skull with a broom, just as they did their fantastic carpets.

She couldn’t _remember_.

But Danny had definitely come home.

Danny had come—Danny had—Danny was—

“DANNY!” Carmilla shouted, damn the early hour, damn the neighbors.

Danny wasn’t—Danny was in—Danny wasn’t with her—

Danny was still in a desert, camo-clad, gun at her shoulder, ruby around her neck.

“Danny,” Carmilla whimpered, sinking to the floor.

 

=============================

 

“Garbage bags,” Carmilla murmured, scrubbing herself raw with a pumice stone. Her skin was red from heat and friction now, not from blood. She’d been in the shower, berating herself and outlining about how to take care of the body in her bedroom for going on an hour. The water had been running cold for twenty minutes.

“Bleach... drop cloth,” Carmilla whispered. No need for a bone saw. She could just finish ripping her apart.

She usually left the bodies to their fates, but for some brilliant reason she’d decided to drag the girl home first.

Drug her home and fucked her, in her and Danny’s bed.

“Shit!” Carmilla gasped, crying, crying, crying. She put her hand to her mouth and bit, curled her fingers into a fist and beat on the wall… shattered the tile from the force.

Daniele would never forgive her… should never forgive her. The drugs and the drink and the depressive slump of worry didn’t give her free reign. She’d made a promise. A promise for _forever_. Just like Danny; Danny was coming back to their _forever_.

And what had she done? Killed a girl… fucked her in Danny’s _home_.

In Danny’s _bed_.

Trampled over and disrespected and violated a promise. The only promise she’d thought she might keep in all her three hundred years.

Thuds against the door finally forced her to shut off the shower. She was clean. Smelled fine. The opposite of someone with a hygiene regimen from the 1600s. She’d even showered around eight in the morning. She could almost pass for normal. Never mind the clothes strewn in the hallway, a shattered vase of sunflowers, and the corpse in the bedroom. Carmilla could barely put the night together, and now the world expected her to function this early in the morning?

Fuck it.

Fuck everything.

Carmilla threw a black satin robe on and combed her fingers through her hair. The thumping continued, measured taps, steady as a leaky faucet.

“Coming,” Carmilla grumbled, hoping to dispose of the visitor quickly. She genuinely hoped it was Mr. Ryman… Richard… Reggie?

To hell with it.

She threw open the door, a curse on the tip of her tongue.

“What do you—”

“Carmilla Karnstein?”

No.

No-no-no-no-no-no-no-no-no-no-no-no-no-no-no-no...

God, just… no.

“K-Kirsch?”

“Hey, Karnstein,” first lieutenant Brody Kirsch said, outfitted in his green service uniform. The ‘Class A’ one. For people who did so much fighting, they sure required a lot of outfit changes. The lopsided beret made his skull look concave, as if someone had taken a hammer to the side of it.

His arm was in a black Velcro sling. His face was bruised and sliced open, an angry red gash running the length of his jaw bone that only just looked like it had begun to scab. His shoulders were still set in the military stance but his eyes were weary and rueful.

The man beside him was older, stilted, more dignified, too somber…

He began speaking: “I’ve been asked to inform you that—”

“Sir,” Kirsch interrupted, back ramrod straight. Carmilla’s focus shifted in and out, knowing what was coming, knowing she was losing it. Sparkles clouded her vision. Stardust.

Was Danny laughing there behind Kirsch? Was this all some elaborate prank?

“I know I’m violating protocol here, sir, but she was my superior officer. I feel I need to do this,” Kirsch pivoted on his foot to face Carmilla head on.

“C-Carmilla,” Kirsch began, the set of his jaw loosening to a quivering wobble. “I’ve been asked to inform you that your… that your wife and my—my _friend_ , has been reported dead in Al-Iskandariya, Iraq, at 1700 on May 11, 2021. Captain Lawrence and her squad were performing a roadside sweep for IEDs in the north quadrant of the city... when... she-Lawrence noticed a live grenade and—”

“Martyred herself like a dipshit,” Carmilla finished quietly for him. She chuckled, shaking her head, hysteria bubbling at the base of her lungs like a geyser.

Carmilla needed to be careful with them there. She dared not _giggle_ over her wife’s demise, even though it’s just. Too. Damn. Appropriate.

...

...

...

“Like a—how—do you really—?” Kirsch blustered, face blotched to red patches of fury. “How _dare_ you, Karnstein—”

“Lieutenant!” the older man chided, somewhere between consoling and gruff. Professional, Carmilla decided. Sure. Death informants had to be, above all, professional.

Kirsch’s nostrils flared but he continued: “On behalf of the Secretary of Defense, I extend to you my deepest sympathy in your great loss.”

“A whole lot of good your sympathy does me, beef cake,” Carmilla said, certain the world was spiraling out from under her.

Her premonition… from last night at the club, a moment of terror registered, not wholly understood, that led to a death notification. Ha! She could do them one better. She’s got a body in her bedroom, exsanguinated, a couple of the pumpkin’s limbs strewn about the room. Probably what Danny looked like after she’d been blown to bits by a grenade. It _was_ Tarantino this time, her wife’s long, muscular leg twenty yards to the east, a clear blue eye ball, itchy with grit because it landed in the sand (no amount of eye drops would rid her eyes of irritant), Danny’s fingers, cracked and decimated upon impact, those fuck-all dog tags and her ruby engagement ring, little more than shrapnel after an explosion against bloody, bloody sands—

Kirsch was the one with his arm in a sling. Darren was the one Carmilla had feasted on and fucked. And Danny, Danny was the one who—

“Karnstein,” Kirsch said again, crying openly now.

—who was dead. Daniele was dead.

Danny died.

Danny probably saved a bunch of people and died to do it.

She died for them.

She promised… she promised to die for _me._

Carmilla leaned against the door, oddly aware she was thinking of her wife’s remains as her victim’s corpse lay hardening on her bedroom floor.

“Anything else?” she finally managed, dry-eyed and tight-lipped.

“Mam’, we can refer you to a number of grief counselors in the area—”

“That won’t be necessary,” Carmilla clipped, not meeting the older man’s eyes.

“She’s getting the Medal of Honor, you know,” Kirsch supplied, as if some cheap piece of star-shaped gold could compensate for the loss of love.

The loss of _forever_.

Carmilla watched two heads turn at a sound near the end of the hall, but dared not open the door further. Not to let the grief in, or to let the blood out. Carmilla’s life was cyclical entrapment, new horrors ready to beat her bones every decade. At least she’d actually signed up for this one. Really, by now? She should know better.

But it was just so _like_ her, so fucking stubborn like Danny, to go and get herself killed.  And if she really took the time to mull it over, there would be no way Danny would consent to being turned. It went against everything her Gingersnap stood for: rightness, truth, _helping people, ‘Calla_ , as she so often threw into Carmilla’s face. Really was no way that Danny loved her enough to allow her to turn her, to kill with her, to live with her forever.

No way Daniele Lawrence thought Carmilla Karnstein was worth forever. No way Danny genuinely loved her as much as she proclaimed.

And now, of course, no way Carmilla Karnstein would ever know for sure.

Off-tempo thumps came down the hall and there stood Mr. Ryman-Reggie-Ronald-Ringo, an olive green Army garrison cap atop his head, a yellow 47 and ‘Vietnam Veteran’ stitched into the side.

He wasn't dead.

Last night must've been... Carmilla would never know last night to be anything more than a fantasy.

“Sir,” R-man saluted, then gave a perfunctory nod toward Kirsch. He hobbled about, hacked a smoker’s cough into a handkerchief, but finally faced Carmilla, a half-present consciousness in the doorway.

“I never was fond of you and your live-in lady—”

“She was my wife, cretin,” Carmilla seethed, curtailing the urge to crack three necks and flee the country.

“From what I hear, she was a hero. My condolences for your loss, and I thank you for her service,” the man said, extending his hand.

Carmilla didn’t spare him a glance. This was not her big epiphany, her come-to-divine saving grace. Those revelations were reserved for the select few who still possessed hope, souls, and chances. Revelations were for humans, not demons.

Besides, her last chance died at five last Tuesday afternoon.

“Remains?” she asked stoically.

The older informant stepped in. “She’ll receive the full honors military burial.”

“But is there anything _left_ of her?” Carmilla asked bluntly. “Nothing I’d want to see, is what I’m getting from you two.”

“Karnstein, I’m gonna miss her too—”

“Spare me your pity, Brody. Your pining the last few years of our courtship was trial enough.”

“She was my _friend_. She _saved_ me.”

“Please, just… just leave me alone, okay?” Carmilla said, crumbling under the gaze of the servicemen before her. All three of them, with all of their combined _pity_ … it was almost as bad as the blood.

“You’ll be contacted about burial proceedings,” the elder officer said.

Mr. R had started the trudge back to his apartment, cane thumping against the hollow floor of the hallway. Like a heartbeat. Or... not.

“Can’t wait,” Carmilla grit, moving to shut the door.

“Karnstein.”

“What?!”

“Here,” Kirsch said, letting the chain of the dog tags pool in her open palm.

L A W R E N C E

D A N I E L E

976-372-5534

O - N E G A T I V E

A R T E M I S

“Where’s her ring?” Carmilla asked, clutching the dog tags to her chest. “She always put her wedding ring on the chain.”

“Not since they changed the rule,” Kirsch explained. “She wore it every day. Turned the stone down toward the inside of her palm so it didn’t catch on stuff. Rubbed her raw in that heat but she insisted. Said, ‘Carm’s a bigger pain in my ass than this little thing. And it’s all I’ve got of her right now, so piss off’ to anybody who questioned her,” Kirsch finished, grim and jealous. “She just… really loved you, you know?”

...

...

...

“I guess we’ll never know,” Carmilla answered.

“What do you mean?” Kirsch asked.

“Nevermind, just… just leave,” Carmilla said, and shut the door.

She put the dog tags around her neck, and thought about hanging herself with one of Danny’s sturdier scarves. She’d tried that once in the 1800s and had only managed a severe crick in her neck. Plus, she’d need to be present for the funeral. Look appropriately aggrieved, overwrought, manic. She was leaning towards the latter of the three states currently, eyeing every sharp object in the house. Happy every time she felt the agony in her kneecap. Even the whole wooden spatula idea didn’t seen so inane now. Not when she had determination on her side.

“Well, fuck you, Gingersnap,” Carmilla spoke to her fridge where Danny’s smiling picture (once benign and pretty) now filled her with nothing but contempt and scorn.

“Fuck you for leaving me wondering, you know?” she whispered, doubts crushing her like bloody waterfalls.

“Fuck you... and love you, both,” Carmilla said, running a finger over Danny’s face on the picture.

“But what am I supposed to do now?”

The overturned sunflowers lay scattered and dying near a glass half-empty, blood dripping slowly down the sides of the container.

“You finally got me to plan and… well, it’s hard when you offer forever and snatch it away,” Carmilla spoke to the air, then took a sip of blood gone sour. The yellow petals weren’t so yellow anymore. The drizzle not so loud. The grey more grey and the future more… whatever. Carmilla had some pills in the pantry. Alcohol in the cabinets. Not much else.

“What the fuck am I supposed to do now?” Carmilla asked again, but nobody answered her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HA! I killed her before Jordan could! I'm just preparing myself should the worst come to pass. Danny was doomed from the start, my favorite characters always die. Also threw in a very minor nod to my other Lawstein series, because, why not?
> 
> Thanks for everybody who kept up with this! Feedback and critique are always appreciated.

**Author's Note:**

> This popped up while I was trying to avoid ending 'Vagabond'. Honestly, Zeta Society is far more conducive to an Army AU, but Lawstein is better for angsty one/two-shots, so... lesser of two evils until I get off my lazy bum and write the Zeta Society novel I've been planning ever since "That's What Bros Are For" petered into nonexistence.
> 
> All that nonsense aside, feedback appreciated!


End file.
